Who owns the debt-ceiling issue again?

posted at 2:05 pm on July 27, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

Yesterday, I rebutted the strange New York Times chart making the rounds which makes it look as though the Bush administration and Republican Congresses have been responsible for all of the spending growth of the last generation. Today, John Hinderaker points out another chart from Heritage, which shows exactly where the debt expansion occurred, and who is responsible for it:

Of the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling we have now, $4.5 trillion got added by Democrat-controlled Congresses since taking control in 2007. That corresponds exactly with the expansion in spending by Democratic Congresses over the same period:

Again, this new chart doesn’t exactly let Republicans off the hook, either. In the six years preceding this $4.5 trillion expansion of debt limits, Republicans expanded it by $3.85 trillion themselves — over six years, not three. The increasing pressure of entitlement spending created much of the need for this, but Congress under both parties increased discretionary spending at the same time, too — and Democrats did more of that than Republicans, as this chart showed yesterday:

John writes:

The chart also responds implicitly to some recent Democratic Party talking points. The Democrats like to point out that the ceiling was raised 18 times during the Reagan administration. That’s right, an average of about once every six months. In other words, those increases were small and highly temporary, as you can see from the chart. It is also noteworthy that the total increase in the debt ceiling during the Reagan years was almost exactly equal to the increase in the debt ceiling during the Clinton administration. Neither, however, is in the same universe with the spiraling debt the Democrats have racked up since they took control of Congress in 2007.

Both parties have a great deal of responsibility for bringing us to where we are today. However, the assertion that it’s more the fault of George Bush and Republicans rather than Barack Obama and Democrats is patently absurd. These charts show exactly where spending increased, by how much, and the actions taken by Congress under control of each party — and every one of them shows the rate of increase in discretionary and mandatory spending rising faster under Democrats than Republicans, and the debt-ceiling hikes going up significantly faster.

All of this misses the point, however. We elected this Congress to change the way the federal government operates. Trimming $71 or $74 billion a year in spending won’t turn the tide on debt aggregation; we need fundamental, structural reform of spending that reduces to zero the amount of money we have to borrow on an annual basis to pay our bills.

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The Progressive/Modern Liberal/statist ideology, going all the way back to The New Deal, has failed.

It has failed in America. It has failed in Europe. It has failed in South America. It can never last over an extended period of time, anywhere.

It makes no difference if the people in power are Republicans or Democrats. If they push Leftist policy, it will eventually fail, period.

The only solution is to vote for the most conservative candidate possible. Since conservative Democrats are extinct, the only choice is conservative Republicans. Left-leaning Republicans need to be voted out.

I sent this to the tips email addy, but in case they don’t get it, or see it…could someone read this, and explain it in greater detail? I’m not quite sure what the ramifications are, but when it’s an exec order, signed yesterday by Obama, and without any news on it…I’m suspicious.

The Democrats like to point out that the ceiling was raised 18 times during the Reagan administration.

They obviously have no concept of cumulative effect.

If you are carrying a backpack containing 50 stones, 5 lbs each, and I want to throw in another 50 lb stone, it doesn’t much matter who threw in the 5 lb stones.

That would be like a person accelerating a train from 100mph to 150mph through a heavily populated neighborhood and trying to justify it because somebody else accelerated the train from 25-30, and then from 30-35, and from 35-40.

So basically, based upon the second and third charts, current revenues of 2.15 T just about covers the “mandatory spending” of 2.1 T, right? Therefore, everything in the discretionary side has to be cut if entitlements are not reformed. Congress HAS to get entitlement spending under control and OFF of autopilot because discretionary spending, which can be cut, will never go to zero. Whoever runs for congress and chief executive in 2012 BETTER have a detailed plan to deal with this.

Thank you, Ed! These are exactly the types of charts I have been looking for to help my liberal friends understand this debt mess!

Now I would like to see a breakdown of exactly what is included in the mandatory spending. That spending may be mandatory now. But if we understand what is driving those “mandatory” costs, we should be able to reduce those costs too.

For example:

– Could medical malpractice reform help to reduce Medicare costs?

– Do we need to change our legal immigration policies to give higher priority to younger workers who will have more time to contribute to the Social Security system before they begin collecting benefits?

That first chart, the debt and deficit chart is an exponential graph. In exponential growth, the rate of change increases over time – the rate of the growth becomes faster as time passes. The only fate in nature for exponential growth is collapse.

Ed, don’t waste your time with the charts. The RINO’s know full well all about them, they just choose to ignore them and tell conservatives that they have to compromise and make the best of it. If it isn’t time for a third party now, I don’t know when it will be.

Some of my friends have responded to your post by claiming that the reason that the spending rate appears to skyrocket after the democrats take over in 2007 is that Bush essentially kept the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan off the budget by using emergency spending measures, and that the democrats ended that practice, and exposed the true cost of the wars by including them on the budget. With that claim, they attribute spike post 2007 to the proper counting of the cost of the wars, and therefore to Bush, not Obama and the democrats.

Myth #2: Bush’s heavy spending on the Iraq war caused the budget deficits.

While the cost of the Iraq war to date has been enormous when considered by itself, it is far less so when compared to other governmental spending. According to the CBO, the Iraq war cost approximately $709 billion from 2003 to 2010. The stimulus program, passed in the first year of the Obama Administration, has already cost $572 billion, and the CBO estimates that its final cost will be approximately $814 billion, exceeding the costs of the war by more than $100 billion dollars.

Additionally, the cost of the Iraq war represents less than 20% of the accumulated budget deficits for the last 7 years. Hoven points out that the budget deficits, from 2003, through the 2010 estimated deficit, total approximately $4.73 trillion. Thus, even if the government had not funded the war during the past 7 years, the accumulated budget deficit to date would have still been more than $4 trillion.

It’s sad that everyone is totally ignoring the fact that the out of control spending started in 1971. What happened then??

That’s when the dollar was converted to a full fiat currency and the Federal Reserve was given total control of our economy. Both parties fully support the dollar being unpegged from precious metals because it allows them to spend freely – because the debt can just be “printed” away. As long as Congress thinks they can just print their way out of their spending problem then they will not stop spending. Period.

The Appendix has four organizations. In order: Russian, Italian, Japanese , Mexican. Maybe it’s me but teh Won is announcing that international gangsters now have competition from US D’rat party. Marking territory.